Page 109 of Bonetide

Anna watches me carry them over with a small, interested look on her face, but she doesn’t say anything. She’s probably the kind of village woman who has seen a lot of foreigners come in for a lot of reasons over a lot of years, and has long since stopped asking.

I sit down and open Highland Folklore and Tradition. I go to the index and get somewhat excited to see that each-uisge is there. Pages 47-52 and again at 184-186.

I flip to 47.

The book is matter-of-fact about it in a way that is somehow worse than if it had been melodramatic, addressing the folklore as if it’s reality. Here, the each-uisge is a category. They are distinct from kelpie—though similar in many ways, kelpies are tameable river creatures and the each-uisge are sea-loch creatures, larger and deadlier. They come up out of the water in the form of a fine horse, often white or grey, with a wet shine to the coat. They might seem friendly. They will let you approach. They will let you mount. But the moment you touch them, your hand fuses to the hide. You’re basically glued. Then they carry you into the deep water. They drown you. They consume the body. The liver is sometimes returned to shore as a sign and the only part they will not eat. They are particularly fond, the book notes, of beautiful young women.

I loathe myself for taking that line like it’s flattery.

The book also says they can take human form. Often a tall, handsome man. Often dark-haired. Often with something wet about him that he cannot fully shed—the hair, the cuffs of the sleeves, the smell of the loch. He will be charming. He will be a good lover. He will seek out women near his loch, and he will court them in human form before he takes them, and the women who go to him willingly are the ones he keeps the longest.

The women who are eaten quickly are usually the strangers and the hill-walkers, the ones with no connection to the land.

The women who are eaten quickly, the line repeats in my head, bouncing around like a ping pong ball.

The women who are eaten quickly.

He eats the women.

Not in the way he’s been eating me, either, he…

I blink that fact away and continue to read.

Of particular note, the book says, is the each-uisge’s apparent need for an ongoing bargain with a local woman or line of women. The creature seems to require an anchor of sorts, a household, a hearth, which it cannot fully cross until permitted. The traditional ward against an each-uisge is salt at every threshold, iron over the lintel, and rowan at the door. These are not symbolic; the creatures are reported to be physically unable to cross a properly maintained ward without invitation. There is a body of folklore around the keepers of these wards, women who maintained vigil over an each-uisge for the protection of their village, sometimes for decades or generations. The keepers were respected and lonely women.

I read the paragraph again.

Particularly that last damn line.

Then I read about the binding. The book is less specific here. The binding requires a piece of the hide: taken from the creature in horse form, willingly given, kept hidden by the keeper for as long as the binding must hold. The book doesn’t say what willingly given means. The book doesn’t say what hidden means either. The book also doesn’t say what happens if the hide is found, or how you even get the hide. The whole idea makes me sick to even think about it.

I read and read and after some time Anna brings me a cup of weak instant coffee unprompted. I thank her and slam it back, cringing all the way.

When I leave, I check out two of the books, Highland Folklore and Tradition and The Water-Beings of Scotland. The librarian looks at the titles as she’s stamping them, but doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t have to. The look she gives me is exactly the look Mhairi gave me yesterday, that knowing-too-much look, and I realize, standing at her little desk in her tiny library, that the women in this part of Scotland have a network I have only barely begun to see the edges of.

“You take care now,” she says, handing the books back.

“Thank you.”

“Drive safe on the road home.”

“I will.”

“Mind the road. The verges are deep this time of year.”

But I know she’s not talking about the verges.

I’m not too far from the turn-off to the cottage when Maddie calls, her name coming up on the display screen. I stare at it for two rings before I answer, because two rings are what I need to brace for impact.

“Hey, Maddie,” I say, trying to sound bright and cheery even though I know she’ll call my bluff.

“Iris.”

The single word has a whole speech in it.

“I’m sorry.” I immediately apologize.

“You went radio silent.”